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"Mussolini's Italy"

Course of Our Times, Series I

VHS; U-Matic; 16mm film

Producer
WGBH-TV

Program Number
7

Date Aired
ca. 1969

Length
30 min.

Description
The poverty of the country, the disillusionment of returning war veterans, a craven national government, and the threat to the industrial-military-clerical status quo, created a climate in post-war Italy for the rise of the Fascists and the emergence of their leader, Mussolini. A poseur on a grand scale, this "sawdust Caesar" destroyed painfully built democratic institutions, created a police state, and ultimately, in alliance with Germany, threatened the whole of the civilized world. Retribution caught up with him and his own people hanged him like a herring in the public square of Milan and dissolved the Fascist state.